“The number of Americans making $1 million or more fell 40 percent between 2007 and 2009, to 236,883, while their combined incomes fell by nearly 50 percent,” says Frank. “(A)s of 2009, the richest 20 percent of Americans showed the largest decline in mean wealth of any other group.”

He also points out: “Only 27 percent of America’s 400 top earners have made the list more than one year since 1994.”

That’s because in America, people are moving from “low income” to “middle income” to “high income” — or in the reverse direction — all the time. One’s income level is not static in America.

In any event, our nutty, heavily indebted country‘s rich are taking it on the chin — and as they suffer, and rein in hiring, spending and investment, everybody suffers.

Now that I think of it, maybe America’s rich are more like Thurston Howell III than I realized.

Mr. Howell, according to his “Gilligan’s Island” back story, had been a billionaire, but lost much of his wealth during the Great Depression.